While tremendous strides have been made in the treatment of various cancers, in many cases, cancer treatment continues to be a matter of administering one or more anti-cancer agents that are marginally less chemotoxic to healthy cells than they are to the cancer in question. In recognition of this problem, there has been substantial research effort aimed at identifying, understanding and taking advantage of phenotypical behavior peculiar to certain cancer cells. It has long been observed that most cancer cell types generate energy for cellular processes through aerobic glycolysis rather than through oxidative phosphorylation as found in the normal cell. This process, which became known as the “Warburg effect”, is highly energy inefficient and requires cancer cell mitochondria to resort to glucose fermentation to make up the energy deficit. Since perhaps the mid-1990's researchers have sought to identify methods of treating cancer that take advantage of the “Warburg effect” and associated aspects of cancer cell mitochondrial metabolism. See, for example, Wang, et al., Small mitochondrial-targeting molecules as anti-cancer agents, Mol. Aspects Med. 2010 February; 31(1): 75-92.
Samudio, et al., J. Clin. Invest. 120: 142-156 (2010), disclosed that in certain leukemia cell lines “mitochondrial uncoupling—the continuing reduction of oxygen without ATP synthesis—has recently been shown in leukemic cells to circumvent the ability of oxygen to inhibit glycolysis, and may promote the metabolic preference for glycolysis by shifting from pyruvate oxidation to fatty acid oxidation (FAO).” Samudio, et. al., also provided data indicating that inhibition of FAO could sensitize human leukemia cells to apoptosis, and further that inhibition of FAO may prove useful in the treatment of leukemia.
PPARα is known to be an important regulator of fatty acid oxidation. See Pyper, et al., Nucl. Recept. Signal. 8:e002, e002 (2010). It has been reported that the expression of the PPARα gene can be higher in human chronic lymphocyte leukemia (CLL) making this cancer type sensitive to therapies aimed at reducing FAO (Samudio et al., J. Clin. Invest. 120:142-156 (2010)). This effect may generalize to several cancer types. For example, ovarian cancer and breast cancer (Linher-Melville et al., 2011, BMC, 4; 11:56), thrive in an adipose rich environment and as a result can be negatively impacted by targeted therapies that reduce fatty acid metabolism (Nieman et al., 2011, Nat Med. 2011 Oct. 30; 17(11):1498-503). Still other cancers that rely on FAO include prostate cancer (Liu, Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis. 2006; 9(3):230-4), colon cancer (Holla et al., 2011, JCB 286(34):30003-30009), pancreatic cancer (Khasawneh et al., 2009, PNAS 106(9):3354-3359) and lung cancer (Zaugg et al., 2011, Genes and Development, 25:1041-1051).
GW6471 (Xu et al., Nature 415, 813-817 (2002) and MK-866 (Kehrer et al., Biochem. J. 356, 899-906 (2001) have been identified as antagonists of PPARα. Moreover, MK-866, whose primary activity is as an inhibitor of FLAP, has been disclosed to induce apoptosis in a human chronic lymphocytic leukemia cell line in a FLAP-independent manner; and has also been disclosed to induce apoptosis in prostate and glioblastoma cell lines.
It is our belief that in cancers that rely heavily on FAO, antagonism of PPARα by small molecules provides a panoply of anti-cancer treatment opportunities to: reduce or halt proliferation; decrease or reverse immunosupression; enhance apoptosis; and increase susceptibility of cancerous cells to other anti-cancer agents. These cancers include prostate, breast, colon and pancreatic cancer, among others.
Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is model of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) disease. In 2008, Ito et al. disclosed evidence linking the loss of promyelocytic leukemia (PML) gene expression with favorable outcomes in CML (Nature, 2008 Jun. 19; 453 (7198) 1072-1078). More recently Ito et al. disclosed that in the PML pathway, loss of PPAR6 and accompanying inhibition of mitochondrial FAO induced loss of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) maintenance (Nature Medicine, doi:10.1038/nm.2882). Moreover, Carracedo et al. disclosed that whereas PML expression allowed luminal filling in 3D basement membrane breast cancer, the effect was reversed by inhibition of FAO (J. Clin. Invest. 2012; 122(9):3088-3100). This and other evidence supports our view that inhibition of fatty acid oxidation, via antagonism of PPAR's (including PPARα), will prove effective in inhibiting asymmetric leukemia stem cell differentiation, and therefore, prove effective in preventing the onset of and/or recurrence of acute and chronic myeloid leukemia, as well as other cancers.
PPARα antagonists have also been shown to inhibit HCV replication and thereby prove useful in the treatment of HCV infection (Rakic et al., Chem. & Biol. 13, 23-30 (January 2006)). In some embodiments, PPAR modulators have been shown to inhibit viral transcription and replication and thereby prove useful in the treatment of viral diseases (Capeau et al., PPAR Research Volume 2009, Article ID 393408, 2 pages). In some embodiments, PPARα antagonists are useful in the treatment of HIV infection. PPARα antagonists have also been disclosed to be useful in the treatment of metabolic disorders (WO2012/027482A2). Metabolic disorders include, but are not limited to diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, impaired glucose tolerance, syndrome X, and cardiovascular disease.